We bought MetaOT and MetaSerifOT on behalf of a client from the good folks at FontShop. Our client uses PCs and executes their daily tasks using Microsoft Office applications such as Word. We followed the installation instructions on FontShop’s website, so I’m pretty sure both are installed correctly.

The issue we have is that our client has to go to the font menu each time they need to apply italics, bold and bold italics. They are not the type of client that would easily grasp the importance of this and, without doubt, will be hitting those italic/bold buttons to emphasise their text, resulting in faux italics/bold.

My question is this: is their a way that they can hit the italic/bold buttons and get the true MetaOT-Bold, MetaOT-Italic and MetaOT-BoldItalic?

Those aren't faux bold and italic buttons. They're just buttons. If the typeface has the styles, and they are set up in the standard Windows fashion, the links will work fine from using the buttons, and they will get the true styles.

If the fonts are *not* properly style linked as they probably should be, there is nothing the client can do to change that.

If the Bold and Italic fonts show up separately in the font menu in Word, then they're not style linked. If they don't show up separately, then everything is presumably fine.

In Word, you can add buttons to the Formatting toolbar (or any other toolbar) for any installed font. Right click anywhere in any toolbar and select Customize. Select the Command tab. In the Categories pane, scroll down to and select Fonts. In the Commands pane, you should see all your fonts. Click and hold the left mouse button on a font name, drag it to wherever you want it on the toolbar, and release the mouse button.

While you're in the Customize dialog, you can also remove the Bold, Italic, and Underline buttons from the Formatting toolbar. Just click, hold, and drag the appropriate button well away from the toolbar area.

When you close Word, you'll probably be prompted to save changes to the normal.dot template.

Forgot to mention that if you don't want to mess with the existing toolbars, you can create a new toolbar (Customize > Toolbars > New), name it something like "Fonts," and drag your font buttons to that.

I mentioned taking the standard bold, italic, and underline buttons off the Formatting toolbar in the very specific context of Conor's problem. Taking the buttons off the Formatting toolbar would prevent his client from creating "faux" Metaserif bold, italic, or bold italic and ensure that they have to use the buttons on the created-for-the-purpose "Font" toolbar. For the general 99.999999999% of Word users who aren't concerned about faux Metaserif bold or italic, of course there's no reason to take the buttons off the standard Formatting toolbar.

I don't disagree with you, but as I said, I only mentioned it, not recommended it. Information is good, right?

Two other considerations:

1. The buttons on the Format toolbar (or any toolbar) are only shortcuts. You can always format text using Ctrl-b, Ctrl-i, or Ctrl-u, or by going to Format > Font.

2. Perhaps Meta is only used for a few specific kinds of documents, not everything. You can create a special template (e.g., "meta.dot") and store the customized toolbars in that. Normal.dot would have an untouched Format toolbar and no custom "Font" toolbar.